Saturday, May 26, 2007

Taking the 100-400 for a Walk

As you may recall in my last blog entry, I was complaining of being tired and having some back pains as a result of lugging my heavy camera gear whenever we are doing our sorties. After some introspections and consultations with my beloved wife, I made a decision to only bring my heavy artillery if our outings would not involve a lot of walking. Otherwise I will just carry a smaller camera/lens combo. Inasmuch as Cynthia was already hooked on bird photography and therefore adamantly refuses to let me use "her" 300mm lens, I presented her with this proposition: I would buy a smaller lens (the Canon 100-400 zoom would serve my purpose perfectly) only if it would be offered with "no sales tax" (which would add roughly $120 to the retail price) and "no interest for 1 year". Please bear in mind that those conditions very rarely go together. As a matter of fact, we've never seen that kind of offer being published ever.So we prayed. It's for my poor, old, fragile body's sake, we told the Lord. Thursday, May 10th, while waiting for our laundry to get washed, we passed away the idle time reading the Los Angeles Times. As I was getting to the last page, there was a 2-page colored advertisement from Samy's Camera announcing that they will waive the sales tax for any item purchased in their store from May 10 to May 15th. Moreover, if the purchase price is greater than $299, they had a "no interest, no payment until May 2008" offer. I immediately showed the ad to Cynthia and right then and there we thanked God for His goodness and faithfulness. Nothing is impossible with the Lord!Hallelujah!!!Cynthia then asked, "So, when are you going to buy the lens?""I''m thinking maybe Saturday, after your doctor's appointment", I replied."What?! ", she said incredulously, "Saturday, I want you using that lens already as we will go birding after my doctor's appointment"Now how can I argue with that?And so it came to pass that on Friday, during my lunch break, I hied over to Samys store in Pasadena, not far from where I work, and obtained for myself God's answer to our prayers.As planned, Saturday morning we went birding to Placerita Canyon, where I "test drove" the Canon 100-400 zoom lens while Cynthia tried to familiarize herself with a 1.4 extender attached to her 300mm. Weather and birds not being that cooperative, we still managed to get some keepers. It would probably take a couple more weeks before taking pictures with our new gears would become second nature to us. All in all, my expectations were met and I think I will be happy with this new lens. At least my back and shoulders were overjoyed.